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George Herbert, poet and Anglican priest, died of tuberulosis in 1633 at age 40. His friends described his last three weeks in sickbed, attended to by them and members of his family. They recorded his words: "I now look back on the pleasures of my life past, and see in…
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12843
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Overheard from the back seat of car:
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128138
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12895
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I was working on my dissertation that summer, and I took a part-time job doing psychological testing in a poor public school system. The town would send me around to different elementary schools to test their most troubled children, or, rather,…
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12875
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I listen to my psychotherapy patients complain about their lives all day. Bitterly, hopelessly. I listen for little openings that offer possibilities for changing perspective and feeling weller. But my five minutes between each session, whether it includes a bathroom or…
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128127
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12811
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Doris LessingWasn´t messingAbout or wingingIt when she wrote The Grass Is Singing
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128149
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the only safe place for him was anywhere he and Barkley could huddle,
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12688
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My grandmother and her children spent six weeks living in barns, then were taken for a three day nightmare ride in hot cattle cars to Auschwitz.
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125158
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12553
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‘Your writing is terrible,’ she said triumphantly, and there was silence. I wanted to say, no Tara, that’s too much, he needs this – working terrible jobs for years, forever, always feeling the discrepancy between his middle-class childhood and his hand-
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12400
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It's been nearly a full week since getting rid of our cable. As my lady put it, "It feels good not to be connected to the social unconscious." Do I feel like less of a programmed drone? Only to a certain extent.
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12497
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There were so many suicide choices it seemed overwhelming. The chief criteria was the least pain.
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121178
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Here's how it works. The clock in my therapy office ticks off the minutes I get to spend talking with each patient, forty-five in and out, regardless of the amount of distress. Less distress has the option of being shoved out earlier but…
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1211211
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I am Gloria, age nine, standing with my left hand on the green gate to the yard of the farmhouse that I will always consider Home
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120125
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The vet sat with a young woman and old man on a bench in the waiting area. The vet talked like a machine-gun, giving post-surgical instructions for the care of a dog as the woman petted the back of her father who was trembling like…
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11921
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On my way to the creative writing class the next week, I decided that, despite the canonical immortalization of ‘Virginia’ the nineteen-year-old nymph, I didn’t like his story. What was I going to say? Did he expect me to fuck him now? My hands grew sweat
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1181410
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Celia was born with another baby's head atop her head and everyone in the village thought her cursed. It was because Celia's mother had been too young to be intimate with a man, twelve only, and the man, important in the village,…
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118126
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118107
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We should put him out of his misery.
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117106
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A writer was looking for characters for a new story and decided to rent out a room in his brain, thinking it might attract someone interesting. Given the poor real estate market, there were no takers, and he decided to offer the room for…
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117118
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11776
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11584
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Women have been mean to women since Biblical times, Sarah and Hagar vying for Abraham's loyalty, to the Archie comics with best friend rivals Betty and Veronica. Usually the conflict is over a man, but it could be merely envy or a…
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11551
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Larry’s unwashed hands held a cardboard sign. Two largely printed words that would, every now and then, elicit a thumbs up. “Got Pot?” was the only question he really wanted an answer to.
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11552
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When you sit long enoughthe low-lying scrubbegin to swaynot with the windbut of their own volition.It takes timefor them to trust youWhen you sit long enoughthe tree top brancheswelcome waves of fogand gently pushthe mist inland.It takes timefor the cloud-tide to rise.When…
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11577
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The High Priest Psychiatrist at Orwellian Industries Medical Center where I used to work loved to hear himself say the following, to my horror, at every staff meeting: "We psychiatrists prescribe the poisons to the patients and the…
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115157
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11487
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I would like to credit St. Mary's and St. Joseph's for my decision to become a Buddhist nun. The day after I sacrificed my virginity to Johnny Delaney, St. Joseph's star quarterback, he dumped me for Fiona Kelly. That's when I decided to…
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11300
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Chicago was dark, the cheerless snow brightened nothing, blackened once scraped to the edges of parking lots, within days the brutal cold petrified snow into ice for months, zinc skies from early November to the end of March deadened eyes grey.
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